The public deserve an effective police force – if only the government would give it to them

Boris Johnson’s “crime week” was heralded with great fanfare, but it masks a decade of cuts and underfunding to creaking criminal justice services.

By Louise Perry

Boris Johnson greets a police officer at the National Memorial Arboretum during "crime week" on 28 July 2021 in Stafford, England. (Photo By Christopher Furlong-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

In the last week of July we witnessed the government’s “crime week”, intended to reassure the public that we should expect an imminent crackdown by a government that claims to take crime seriously. If only it did.

The papers were filled with jolly pictures of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel meeting police dogs (“Do you have to worry about romantic urges?” the Prime Minister asked of one dog handler, no doubt reflecting on Dilyn the Jack Russell’s penchant for humping visitors to Downing Street). And a video of Johnson grappling comically with an umbrella during the unveiling of a memorial to fallen police officers was widely shared on social media. Oh how we laughed.